Mariapia Mendola is Professor of Economics at University of Milano Bicocca and Director of the Poverty and Development Program at Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano in Turin.
She holds a B.Sc. in Economic and Social Sciences from Bocconi University in Milan. Prior to graduate studies, she studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and worked at ECLAC in Santiago. Mariapia Mendola received an MA in Development Economics from the University of Sussex in 2002 and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Milan in 2005. She was a visiting fellow at the EUI Migration Policy Centre (Robert Schuman Centre) in 2023, at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam in 2008 and at the Department of Economics at New York University (NYC) in 2006.

She has published in international journals such as the Journal of European Economic Association, the Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of International Economics, among others. Her research is in the field of development economics and economics of migration.

She has served as consultant and policy advisor for various international organisations such as the WB, UNDP, FAO, EC, NRC in different countries in Africa, Latin America and the Western Balkans.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2014.